John,

Your shaft is fine. If anything was overheating it would be the
gimble bearing, not the shaft, as that is what would take the strain.

You've done well to check your alignment, because as the fiberglass
around your engine mounts settles it will potentially put strain on
the gimble bearing. Also, it will make it much more difficult to
remove your outdrive should you need to remove it again for service.

Make sure that you grease your gimble bearing well and regularly, and
as the Brian also writes, use the right grease on your shaft when you
reinstall it to make sure that it will come apart again when you need
it to.

Also, make sure that you get the gasket between the outdrive and the
bell housing, as well as the o-ring around the water passage sealed well.

BTW, alignment is best done by two people with one person in the boat
turning the motor mount adjustment, and the other person feeling with
the alignment tool--but you probably figured that out ;-)

Good luck,

Don W.

John Chaplain wrote:
I pulled my outdrive to check the alignment.
(2002 Mercruiser Alpha One outdrive.)

I've never done this before but I'm a machininst and a half assed
mechanic, so I think I can handle it.

My first question is....in the picture you can see that it looks like
the shaft has taken some heat judging by the coloration of the shaft.

http://home.comcast.net/~johnchaplain/shaft1.jpg


Is this normal or is this due to overheating because of misalignment?

The alignment tool only goes in about a third of the way into the
coupling before it binds up. My second question is I'm wondering how
bad the alignement is if the tool goes in freely at least a third of
the way, it seems that that must be pretty close. Is that offalignment
bad enough to have overheated the shaft?

TIA,
John C.